"The Iranian regime’s strategy today is simple. Fight a war of attrition against the United States. Maintain strategic, military, and economic relationships with Communist China and Russia to keep the economy afloat and the arsenal of drones and missiles replenished. And wait for the day when President Trump is out of office, trusting that his successor will lack his resolve. The mullahs believe time is on their side. Every American president before President Trump taught them to believe it."
. . . "To understand the war, one must first understand the Iranian regime.
"'The mullahs who rule Iran look on the Iranian people—whose attendance at Friday mosque services ranges from a high of 12% to perhaps as low as 1.0%, the lowest in the Middle East—with contempt. They regard themselves as the faithful remnant, determined to fulfill an apocalyptic worldview, whatever the cost to the nation they rule. The Iranian people are expendable instruments of that destiny.
"Herein lies our central challenge: we Americans value human life. We do not wish to kill the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom do not share the anti-Western fanaticism of the Islamic Republic. But because the Iranian people do not have guns, they are poor candidates to overthrow the regime that oppresses them. Any serious effort at regime change would require continued economic warfare, the arming of various factions within the country, and the separation of the Iranian military from the theocratic leadership. These are not quick or easy steps, and no one should pretend otherwise.
"Let us be clear: in this war we play by different rules than our enemy. If Iran had the capability to launch an array of thermonuclear weapons against the United States—whether from long-range ballistic missiles or from medium-range, ship-launched ballistic missiles, the latter delivery system well within their capability—they might well do so. It would not matter to them that the response would be the nuclear annihilation of Iran. For the mullahs, such a cataclysm would fulfill their apocalyptic worldview. A regime that hates its own people will not be deterred by the promise of their destruction.
"This is the reason President Trump believes Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. It is not a position he arrived at recently, nor one supplied to him by the so-called Israel Lobby or the military-industrial complex. He has held this view for more than a quarter century, as I’ve previously argued." . . .More...
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